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New Orleans’ homeless set up second camp

Associated Press
Published 11:33 a.m. CT Aug. 18, 2014

New Orleans city officials, homeless advocates and police converge under the Pontchartrain Expressway before dawn Thursday to move out the approximately 150 homeless people have been living under the bridge.
(Photo:
AP
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NEW ORLEANS – About 30 homeless people evicted from beneath the elevated Pontchartrain Expressway in New Orleans moved only a few blocks after authorities cleared out an encampment of about 160.

Area residents say they've had no luck getting the city's attention.

The city swept through the encampment below the highway early Thursday, saying garbage, human waste and rats had created a public health concern.

The first tents were set up on a grassy median at Calliope (KAL-ee-ope) and Camp Streets only hours after the 4:30 a.m. sweep. By Saturday about 30 people appeared to be living there.

"Clearly, if the garbage and human waste is a 'public health concern' on one side of St. Charles, it has to be considered a 'public health concern' on the other side of St. Charles," Jeff Keiser, who lives near the new encampment, wrote in an email to city officials Thursday.

According to the city, 84 people entered shelters after the sweep. It was unclear where other former encampment residents went.

Keiser said, "I think these are the people who have chosen, for lack of a better term, to remain homeless."

David Bottner, executive director of the New Orleans Mission, said Saturday that even though the under-the-bridge population was troubling because of its cohesiveness and large numbers, it represented only a fraction of the homeless population of the city.

A March survey by UNITY of Greater New Orleans, a nonprofit organization that coordinates the city's response to homelessness, found 1,981 people were living in shelters, on streets and in abandoned buildings in Orleans and Jefferson parishes.

The homeless population peaked in 2007 at 11,619.

Bottner said his organization goes across the city every day to find homeless people and try to get them into shelters.

He said the city hasn't provided him with any details about what it intends to do with the area under the expressway on a permanent basis, but he's hopeful the homeless encampment won't be allowed to re-emerge.

Bill Quigley, a Loyola University law professor and director of the Gillis Long Poverty Law Center, said he thinks such sweeps are mostly an effort to sanitize downtown before big events, such as the New Orleans Saints' first home game of the 2014, which was Friday.

He said the cleanups also violate the constitutional rights of the homeless, who are often deprived of property without due process.

He said several homeless individuals complained about losing their property during Thursday's crackdown, after which garbage trucks crunched down sofas, armchairs, clothes, shoes and other items.

Quigley described homelessness as an ancient problem that's essentially unsolvable. The homeless are often shuffled from one area to another in an attempt to make them less visible, he said.

"There is an ongoing tension between neighbors and governments to move the homeless to another place. Then when they get to another place, those neighbors aren't that thrilled about it either," he said.

Whether the city will try to shut down the new camp and what it intends to do about the site of the previous encampment was unclear. A spokeswoman for Mayor Mitch Landrieu didn't return a request for comment Saturday.

According to Quigley, the homeless have a right to congregate on public property, but that right doesn't always extend to setting up camp.

"You can't tell them they can't be on public property, but you can tell them they can't set up a home," he said.